Project: The Weird Family Breakfast PART ONE

This was the first sketch I made that started the Weird Family Breakfast series; a combination of characters I created for my Animation classes--even though they were born because of class assignments, I kind of took a shine to them. Anyways, here's the first drawing:

I took the sketch, darkened it a bit in Photoshop, added colors and then copied the sketch and overlayed it to get the bright colors. It made me think of a Saturday morning cartoon series and I decided that I'd always draw these guys eating breakfast. 

Even though it was a rough, hurried sketch I made out of boredom (or something), I liked the sketchy look. Still, I had to urge to redo this. At first, I started tracing this with my wacom but then I realized that 1) I've been changing the appearance of the fish mom with each WFB piece and I've felt I've decided upon a final look for her and wanted to incorporate it in my remakes. She'll now be sporting a shorter, blonde do with a hair band and a fabulous pea coat w/ cuffs. She'll wear her apron only when she's cooking and when she does, she'll usually wear a green version of the yellow raincoat she's wearing in the picture above. Anyways, here's the rough sketch:

Fun on a bun...now for the line art:

I'm desperate to start coloring and shading (because I'm closer to making the drawing look like what I can see in my mind) but I know I want to make sure the lines are just right. I'm learning to control the pressure I put on the pen--a lot of lines vary. Drawing hands is always a pain and drawing Fish Mom w/o oven mitts was challenging; I've decided to give her the fin-hands of her male counterpart. I gave Monster Dad a shirt and a bigger newspaper. I found myself wondering how he manages to sit in a chair but decided that he's probably using two chairs..or something. Actually, he's pretty tall--he could just be sitting on the floor. Scale is another thing I had to consider--I may make Monster Dad smaller but maybe slightly taller than Fish Mom. Well see over time. Anyways, I wanted to post this to show others (all three of you) and myself that I am being productive and...well, this helps and encourages me. Also, something I got from a good friend: